The asteroid Ryugu is an echo from the deep, distant past. Two tiny grains of the rock, delivered to Earth in 2020 by the famous H ayabusa2 mission , contain minerals older than any found on our planet.

One grain comes from the asteroid's surface, the other from within. Both are incredible archives of our early Solar System and the chemical reactions that led to its formation.

An X-ray analysis of the two grains was published in 2024 and recently elaborated upon in a press release from Brookhaven National Laboratory at the US Department of Energy.

"The beauty of these combined techniques is that we can measure the chemistry of both the exterior and the interior of a sample without damaging it," says project lead and geoscientist Paul Northrup of Stony Brook University in the

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